The term "anti-psychiatry" was created by David Cooper
(1931-1986), a collaborator and friend of Ronald David Laing
(1927-1989), and was first used in Cooper's book, Psychiatry and
Anti-Psychiatry (1967). (2) Cooper does not define the term. The closest
he comes to identifying "anti-psychiatry" is the following:
"We have had many pipe-dreams about the ideal psychiatric, or
rather anti-psychiatric, community." (3) Who are the
"we"?

This question is answered in The Dialectics of Liberation (1968),
edited by Cooper with the lead chapter by Laing. In the Introduction,
Cooper writes: "The organizing group of [the 'Congress on the
Dialectics of Liberation,' held in London in 1967] consisted of
four psychiatrists who ... counter-label[ed] their discipline as anti-
psychiatry. (X) The four were Dr. R.D. Laing and myself, also Dr. Joseph
Berke and Dr. Leon Redler." (4) Since Laing was the acknowledged
leader and spokesman of the group, I regard Laing as the person most
responsible for popularizing the term "antipsychiatry."
Neither he nor the other originators of "antipsychiatry"
offered a definition of the term, then or later.

Who was Cooper, why did Laing choose him as a friend and a
co-author, and why did Cooper choose the term "antipsychiatry"
for their collective self-identification? According to Laing, Cooper
"was a trained Communist revolutionary and was a member of the
South African Communist Party. He was sent to Poland and Russia and
China to be trained as a professional revolutionary. ... we cooperated
on writing Reason and Violence." (5) In contrast, Laing identified
me as follows: "I could take exception to his [Szasz's]
association with the John Birch Society and his version of the free
society, rampaging capitalist, post-capitalism of cold war." (6)

In other words, Laing had no problem with Cooper's being a
Soviet agent and professional revolutionary and the violence that such a
role entailed; at the same time, he considered "my [classical
liberal-libertarian] version of the free society" and
"association with the John Birch society" as prima facie
evidence of a character defect.

Let me pause and set the record straight about Laing's
reference to the John Birch Society. I have never had an
"association" with the John Birch Society, which, I might add,
was in the 1960s and for some time afterward, a respectable libertarian,
anti-Communist organization (except in the eyes of committed socialists
and communists). (7) The source of the easily discredited smear that
Laing repeats with relish lies in my having published an essay in 1962,
in the American Journal of Psychiatry, entitled "Mind tapping:
Psychiatric subversion of constitutional rights." (8) In those
days, I received frequent requests from both conservative and liberal
publications for republishing my essays, which I always granted. I
received such a request from the American Opinion, the monthly magazine
of the John Birch Society, which both the American Journal of Psychiatry
and I granted. My "association" with the John Birch Society
was the same as the American Journal of Psychiatry's association
with it. But that was not the way my critics interpreted it.

In the 1960s, my contentions that most irked psychiatrists were
that mental illness is a fiction and that mental hospitals are jails.
Unable, unwilling, and unprepared to address these profoundly troubling
issues, and feeling deeply secure in the moral superiority of their
left-liberal, pro-Soviet ideology, they instead dismissed me as a
right-wing fascist, a member of the "lunatic fringe." (9) A
paper in the American Journal of Psychiatry, by Paul Lowinger, professor
of psychiatry at Wayne State University in Detroit--titled
"Psychiatrists against psychiatry"--was a typical example.
Lowinger wrote:

Lowinger's essay stimulated a protest by T. P. Millar. In a
letter to the editor titled "Guilt by association,"
Millar--whom I did not know then and do not know now--wrote:

For organized psychiatry, the answer appears to be no, especially
when the "guilty association" is itself a false attribution.
The upshot was that, in the aftermath of the virulent condemnation of my
persona generated by the publication of The Myth of Mental Illness,
critics began to smear me as a "John Bircher." (12) Laing and
many of his defenders have embraced that tradition. In fact my
association with the John Birch Society was exactly the same as that of
the American Journal of Psychiatry, a fact my critics seem not to have
noticed.

Laing thought of himself, and many of his admirers still think of
him, as a courageous revolutionary thinker. I disagreed then and
disagree now. He was a conventional thinker in the French-Continental
tradition of "Pas d'enemies a gauche" ("No enemies
to the left"). What was revolutionary in psychiatry in the 1960s
and 1970s, and is even more revolutionary today, is seeing the
State--right or left--as the enemy of the Patient as Person. (13) Laing
was blind to all that. He could see only a Good Left and an Evil Right.
Condescendingly, he was willing to forgive me: "I could make some
allowances because he was a Hungarian and no doubt hated the
Russians." (14) This naively historical-reductionism ignores that
many Hungarians, former and present, are communists.

Laing was a dyed-in-the-wool collectivist. His fame is closely
connected with the commune he founded and named after the community
centre, Kingsley Hall, whose premises it occupied. Established in 1965,
Kingsley Hall was to serve as "a model for non-restraining,
non-drug therapies for those people seriously affected by schizophrenia.
... After five years use by the Philadelphia Association (from 1965 to
1970), Kingsley Hall was left derelict and uninhabitable." (15) The
similarities between the economic and human consequences of the Soviet
regime and Laing's regime--at Kingsley Hall and in his own
life--are not coincidental.

Although sympathetic with Laing's collectivist-socialist
politics, Clancy Sigal (about whom more later) recognized that the
creators of antipsychiatry were doers rather than thinkers, more
interested in applying antipsychiatric practice than articulating
antipsychiatric theory: "[David] Cooper, the most political among
us, insisted that theory took second place to 'praxis.' So It
was important that his brand of non-therapy take place in a National
Health hospital within the state system because that's where most
distressed people were warehoused or, worse, treated." (16)
Obviously, this was, and turned out to be, an arrogant and asinine
policy, like insisting that efforts to save Jews threatened by the Nazi
state take place "within the state system" because that is
where the most endangered Jews live. It was a sign that Laing and his
gang wanted to replacing the reigning psychiatric rulers with a new set
of antipsychiatric rulers, themselves led by Robespierre-Laing. They
were not interested in helping "mental patients" deprived of
liberty to regain their freedom, individually or as a group. This is why
considerations of the legal, moral, and economic aspects of psychiatric
and antipsychiatric practices are absent from their writings.

2

In the biography of his father, Adrian Laing alludes to
"Ronnie's" habitual equivocations and lifelong refusal to
take responsibility for his behaviour, and sagely observes: "Ronnie
wanted to have his cake and eat it ... Ronnie made two mistakes with
David's introduction. First, he did not insist on reading it prior
to publication. Ronnie did not consider himself an
'anti-psychiatrist' ... The damage, however, had been done.
David managed to label Ronnie an anti-psychiatrist. Ronnie was furious
at this move, but made a more serious mistake in not taking immediate
and effective action to rectify his position." (17)

Laing could easily have prevented the term
"antipsychiatry" from being attributed to him: he could have
stopped the publication of The Dialectics of Liberation, either
altogether or in the form in which it appeared; he could have withdrawn
his contribution to it, declaring publicly, then and there, that he
objects to the term. But he did nothing of the sort. Instead he played
the blame game: it was all Cooper's and Cooper's friends'
fault:

He offered a similar explanation-excuse for fathering ten children.
"With the birth of Benjamin on 15th September, 1984," writes
Laing hagiographer John Clay, "Laing now had nine children, with
one more still to come. Why so many children, when he was an only child
himself. [A friend] asked him this once, why he had let it happen. Laing
replied, 'They [his sexual partners] seem to want it. I should have
stopped them!' It was an example of his detachment again, as if it
had nothing to do with him, a closing-off of his feelings, as happened
with his drinking." (19)

The image of Laing as a man helplessly at the mercy of his wives
and paramours defies belief. He had no trouble abandoning women and
children and breaking his promises to patients. We can
"detach" ourselves from certain unwanted experiences, for
example threatening erotic feelings, but we cannot, properly speaking,
"detach" ourselves from our responsibilities. When we do so,
we are irresponsible, not detached. In my view, Laing was pervasively
irresponsible, systematically refusing to accept responsibility for his
actions and their consequences. As Laing explained to Mullan: "I
wasn't thinking of contraceptive devices or anything like that,
that was up to Anne [Laing's first wife]." (20)

Laing was a grand master of equivocation, of "having your cake
and eating it." He played the game of affirmation-and-denial--we
might also call it simply "lying"--and got away with it during
his life and after his death. Having passively assumed the role of the
paradigm antipsychiatrist, he claimed to reject that identification.
Although he was the moving spirit behind Kingsley Hall, the model
anti-mental hospital, he "felt that his hope of Kingsley Hall
providing a safe environment where acute schizophrenic episodes could
occur without electric shocks, tranquilizers and sedation 'never
happened.'" (21) Of course not! As I shall show later, Laing
himself violated that principle.

Nevertheless, many people believed in Laing and still believe in
him.22 It is easier for the mark to believe that he was swindled by a
con man who was sincere than one who was cynical.

Regarding the creation of the term "antipsychiatry,"
there was nothing to rectify. Laing did not repudiate antipsychiatry for
the same reason he did not repudiate psychiatry: he wanted to be a part
of both, while pretending to oppose both. Apropos of my objections to
the term in the 1970s, Adrian Laing writes: "Besides, the point was
lost during the course of the debate that there had been and was only
one 'anti-psychiatrist'--David Cooper.... Thomas Szasz was not
an anti-psychiatrist, nor was Aaron Esterson. Ronnie himself had
denounced the concept. ... No one seemed to want to accept that the
whole idea of anti-psychiatry had been abandoned by those with whom the
term had originated." (23)

Laing's participation in the use of the term
"antipsychiatry" was an act of extreme irresponsibility. The
pen may not be mightier than the sword, but the wounds it inflicts are
likely to be deeper, more debilitating, and longer lasting.
Psychiatrists who create catchy terms to be used as weapons of
destruction must be held responsible for their creation. While Laing the
person and antipsychiatrist may not be worth more attention, this is not
true for the term "antipsychiatry," Adrian Laing's
assurances to the contrary notwithstanding. The principal originators of
the term are dead. The term, however, is alive and well in contemporary
psychiatric and popular discourse. (24) It has become a part of the
English language. The Oxford Dictionary of Psychology (2001) states:
"Antipsychiatry n. A radical critique of traditional (especially
medical) approaches to mental disorders, influenced by existentialism
and sociology, popularized by the Scottish psychiatrist Ronald D(avid)
Laing (1927-89) and others during the 1960s and 1970s." (25) A
Google search of "antipsychiatry" yields 41,000
"hits."

Having never been defined, characterizations of antipsychiatry are
inevitably erroneous and misleading. For example, British
psychotherapist Digby Tantam writes: "A key understanding of
'anti-psychiatry' is that mental illness is a myth (Szasz
1972)." (26) This sentence calls to mind Mark Twain's remark:
"Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with
this, except that it ain't so." (27) There is nothing the
matter with Tantam's remark either, except that it ain't so. I
first used the term "myth of mental illness in an essay in 1960,
and my book, The Myth of Mental Illness, was published in 1961, not
1972. (28)

Although antipsychiatry cannot be defined, it can be identified by
the practices of antipsychiatrists, such as Laing, his colleagues at
Kingsley Hall, and therapists who identify themselves as his followers.
Clearly, antipsychiatrists do not reject the medical-therapeutic
categorization of the human problems they "treat," often under
the auspices of the National Health Service (NHS) or other
government-funded organizations (such as the Soteria Houses). Nor do
they reject the use of coercion and drugs (although they often say they
do). Rejection of the concept of mental illness implies opposition to
psychiatric violence and excuse-making justified by the concept, not
opposition to psychiatric relations between consenting adults.

The word "antipsychiatry" proved to be an effective
weapon in the hands of psychiatrists to collectively stigmatize and
dismiss critics, regardless of the content of the criticism. The
psychiatrist who eschews coercing individuals and restricts his practice
to listening and talking to voluntary, fee-paying clients does not
interfere with the practice of the conventional psychiatrist. He merely
practices what he preaches, namely, that human problems are not diseases
and that it is wrong to initiate violence against peaceful persons. Such
a psychiatrist resembles the agnostic who neither believes in the dogmas
of Judaism or Christianity nor practices their rituals. To call such a
person an antipsychiatrist, or anti-Semite, or anti-Christian does a
grave disservice to the individuals so categorized and degrades the
English language. Nor is that all: it also diverts peoples'
attention from the core moral-political problems of psychiatry, coercion
and excuse-making. This is Laing's true legacy.

The label "antipsychiatry" served Laing well in his climb
up the slippery pole of fame; at the same time, it tarnished every idea
and every person to which the term has been attached. Moreover, the
intellectually and morally destructive consequences of the term continue
to grow. (29) This fact and the recent re-publication of two
"insider" books on Laing's life and work prompt me to add
this brief essay to my previous critiques of Laing's writings and
persona. (30)

3

Psychiatrists engage in many phony practices but none phonier than
the insanity defense. Any serious criticism of psychiatry must begin
with a critique of this paradigmatic psychiatric swindle. Laing never
addressed the subject in his writings but gave "expert psychiatric
testimony" in the famous case of John Thomson Stonehouse
(1925-1988). To fully appreciate the moral loathsomeness of Laing's
role in the Stonehouse affair, it is necessary to present a brief
summary of it.

Stonehouse, a British politician and Labour minister, is
remembered--if he is remembered--for his unsuccessful attempt at faking
his own death in 1974 and for his unsuccessful insanity defense in his
trial for embezzlement. Stonehouse had joined the Labour Party when he
was 16, trained as an economist, was elected a Member of Parliament (MP)
in 1957, and served as Postmaster General. He went into business, lost
money, and tried to bail himself out by engaging in fraudulent business
practices. In 1974, with the authorities about to arrest him, he staged
his own suicide. On November 20, 1974--after having spent months
rehearsing his new identity, that of Joseph Markham, the dead husband of
a constituent--Stonehouse left a pile of clothes on a Miami beach and
disappeared. Presumed dead, he was en route to Australia, hoping to set
up a new life with his mistress. Discovered by chance in Melbourne, he
was deported to the UK and charged with 21 counts of fraud, theft,
forgery, conspiracy to defraud, and causing a false police
investigation.

Stonehouse conducted his own defense, pleaded not guilty by reason
of insanity, was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison. He
suffered three heart attacks, was released in 1979, married his mistress
in 1981, wrote several books--including one about his trial--and died in
1988 from a heart attack. (31) To support his insanity defense,
Stonehouse secured the services of five psychiatrists, R.D. Laing among
them, to testify in court, under oath, that he was insane when he
committed his criminal acts. "As The Guardian reported on 20 July
1976, Ronnie duly did his bit: ... Dr. Laing said that Mr.
Stonehouse's story was unusual in that his two personalities were
joined by an umbilical cord ..." (32) In his book, My Trial,
Stonehouse gave the following account of Laing's participation in
it:

Stonehouse's claim was manifestly absurd. Laing did not know
Stonehouse prior to his trial, hence could have had no "medical
knowledge" of his "mental condition" during the
commission of his crimes. Laing's "diagnosis" was classic
psychiatric gobbledygook, precisely the kind of charlatanry he pretended
to oppose. Laing and Stonehouse were both liars, plain and simple.

Adrian Laing, a lawyer (barrister and solicitor), sagely comments:
"Not surprisingly, Ronnie's evidence made little impression on
the jury who found the idea of a man defending himself while pleading
insanity difficult to swallow. Ronnie himself regretted giving evidence
on behalf of Stonehouse ... he did not have any sympathy with
Stonehouse's account." (34)

Here we go again: "Ronnie" does X, supposedly regrets
having done X, and we are asked to believe - by Adrian or Laing or one
of his acolytes--that the "true" R. D. Laing would not have
done it. If Laing did not believe Stonehouse's fairy tale, why did
he testify in his defense? If he disbelieved Stonehouse's story,
why didn't he reject his request? Did he do it for money and
publicity? Or was confused about what is and what is not a disease or a
crime, what is brain and what is mind?

In his autobiography, Laing naively ponders: "How does the
brain produce the mind? Or is it the other way round?" (35) In an
entry in his diary recorded after the Stonehouse trial, Laing writes:
"Stonehouse: Either a sick man behaving like a criminal or a
criminal behaving like a sick man. If a criminal behaving like a sick
man he is sick; and conversely why not say he is both, a sick criminal,
a criminal lunatic." (36) Like most psychiatrists, Laing ignored
the Virchowian gold standard of disease and felt free to classify
deviance as disease--if it suited his interest.

Laing "evaluated" Stonehouse and concluded that
Stonehouse was too sick to be punished. Similarly, the Training
Committee of the Institute of Psycho-Analysis had evaluated Laing and
concluded that Laing, too, was too sick--"in an obviously disturbed
condition"--to be qualified as a psychoanalyst. Were Stonehouse and
Laing sick patients or were they irresponsible persons?

"I was frightened by the power invested in me as a
psychiatrist ...", Laing states in his autobiography. (37) That,
too, was a lie. Having qualified as a psychoanalyst, Laing was free to
practice psychotherapy or psychoanalysis --that is, listen-and-talk to
voluntary, fee-paying clients. No state authority compelled him to
testify in John Stonehouse's insanity trial. No one forced him to
assault Clancy Sigal with Largactil (as I shall presently describe).
Certifying Stonehouse as criminally insane and forcibly drugging Sigal
were uncoerced, voluntary acts. Laing would have suffered no ill effects
had he abstained from them. He was, however, a grandiose, meddling
psychiatrist who considered all the world's ills his business to
remedy. In many of his photographs he posed as a man carrying all the
world's weight on his shoulders. From his obituary in the New York
Times we learn:

This is not a problem for a non-meddling psychiatrist. No one, in
this hypothetical situation, is asking a psychiatrist for help. The
resolution of this dilemma is the responsibility of the person legally
authorized to control the composition of the orchestra. Laing would not
have posed this pseudoproblem unless he believed that it is a problem
for him.

4

Medical specialties are usually distinguished by their
characteristic diagnostic or therapeutic method: the pathologist
examines cells, tissues, and body fluids; the surgeon cuts into the
living body, removes diseased tissues, and repairs malfunctioning body
parts; the anesthesiologist renders the patient unconscious and
insensitive to pain. The method that characterizes the work of the
psychiatrist and distinguishes it from all other medical methods is
coercion: he deprives the patient of liberty. "[T]he medical
treatment of [mental] patients began with the infringement of their
personal freedom," noted Karl Wernicke (1848-1905), one of the
founders of modern neurology. (39)

Zone of the Interior, a roman a clef by the American writer Clancy
Sigal (born 1926), was published in the United States in 1976. The
threat of British libel laws prevented its publication in the United
Kingdom. Sigal explains: "[The book] was effectively suppressed at
the time. I meant it for the British reader who never got to read it
except as "samizdat" ... It came down to publisher's fear
of libel and, as I learned to my dismay, a revulsion to the material
itself among a few influential types." (40) Only in 2005 did Zone
of the Interior appear in a British edition.

As Sigal discovered, Laing and his cohorts talked nonviolence but
practiced violence, both at Kingsley Hall and their personal lives.
Indeed, the founders of antipsychiatry were happy to serve as agents of
the therapeutic state: They saw themselves as the "good
revolutionary antipsychiatrists" opposing the "bad
establishment psychiatrists." This is why the same basic
features--coercion and excuse-making--characterize psychiatry and
antipsychiatry alike. Adrian Laing writes that by 1966, "Despite
this growing guru element in Ronnie's own thinking, to the outside
world he was still riding two horses. His establishment side was not yet
completely abandoned. ... It seemed as though Ronnie was becoming aware
that he had a choice to make--and increasingly unwilling to make it. He
had to declare himself either anti-Establishment, part of the
counterculture, or otherwise. But his heart was in both camps."
(41) Not really. Laing had no heart. He had long ago replaced it with
self-interest, self-indulgence, and brutality masquerading as
Gandhiesque universal love.

It is obvious that individuals incarcerated in mental hospitals are
deprived of liberty--by doctors called "psychiatrists." Long
before I began my psychiatric training, I regarded mental hospitals as
places where "patients" are deprived of liberty--tortured, not
treated. This is why I chose to serve my psychiatric residency at the
University of Chicago Clinics which, at that time (1946-1948), had no
psychiatric inpatients. After two years, the chairman of the psychiatry
department ordered me to serve my third required year at the Cook County
Hospital, the mammoth madhouse-jail serving the Chicago area. This, he
assured me, was in my best interest, "to have experience with
seriously ill patients." I thanked him for his advice and told him:
"I quit." I completed my psychiatric training requirement at
another facility that served only voluntary outpatients. (42)

I practiced listening-and-talking ("psychotherapy") from
1948 until 1996. From beginning to end, my work rested on the view that
the personal problems people call "mental illnesses" are not
medical diseases and that the confidential conversation called
"psychoanalysis" or "psychotherapy" is not a medical
treatment. Accordingly, I unconditionally rejected the legal powers and
medical privileges that adhere to the professional role of the
psychiatrist. In my view, a non-coercive, non-medical
"therapist" must eschew all interventions associated with the
socio-legally defined role of the psychiatrist, in particular, coercion,
drugs, hospitalization, "treating" persons deprived of liberty
(patients in hospitals or other health care facilities, prisoners),
making diagnoses, and keeping "medical" records. During most
of the time I practiced, it was possible to do this in the United
States. Because of changes in customs and laws since the 1980s, it is,
for all practical purposes, no longer possible today. (43)

The psychiatrist's power to deprive innocent persons of
liberty to "protect" them from being dangerous to themselves
or others, entails the symmetrical obligation to incarcerate and
forcibly "treat" such persons whenever the psychiatrist
believes that "the standard of psychiatric care" requires it.
This is what makes non-coercive psychiatry an oxymoron. (44)

Notwithstanding Laing's bluster, at heart he was a
conventional asylum psychiatrist. In the Preface to the second edition
of Adrian Laing's biography of his father, Professor Anthony S.
David, states: "[Laing] regretted entering into the
outpatient-based psychoanalytic world so early in his career and not
sticking with an environment that, though he passionately criticized it,
was one in which he felt strangely at home, namely the mental hospital
or asylum." (45) Though strangely overlooked, Laing's most
carefully crafted and sober pronouncements are entirely consistent with
the outlook of the traditional coercive/excusing psychiatrist. For
example, he wrote: "When I certify someone insane, I am not
equivocating when I write that he is of unsound mind, may be dangerous
to himself and others, and requires care and attention in a mental
hospital." (46)

In response to my criticism of Laing, Daniel Burston, one of
Laing's biographers, rose to his defense, implying that Laing
regretted this statement and later changed his mind about psychiatric
coercion: "Laing wrote these lines when he was 30 or 31, and a
psychoanalyst in training, and spent the next 31 years (and more) living
them down." (47) There is no evidence for Burston's claim that
Laing opposed psychiatric coercions and excuses, then or later. In fact,
the opposite is the case. Unable to defend his hero with evidence,
Burston charges me with also acquiring bloody hands during my residency
training: "Dr. Szasz is a psychiatrist / psychoanalyst, is he not?
Does Dr. Szasz maintain that he never treated involuntary mental
patients during his psychiatric training, as Laing did--then ceased to
do? If so, then the circumstances in which Szasz became a licensed
psychiatrist (XXX) were unusual indeed!" (48) That is exactly what
I maintain. (49)

The circumstances of my psychiatric training were unusual because,
even before I entered medical school, I concluded that the principles of
psychiatry rest on the mendacious metaphor of "mental illness"
and its practices are based on the use of force, authorized by the state
and rationalized as medical treatment. (50) Nevertheless, Laing's
admirers ceaselessly compare Laing and me, emphasize the praiseworthy
similarities they attribute to our views, and lament my failings which
they attribute to my "right-wing" libertarian politics. In a
long essay in 2006, titled "Laing and Szasz: Anti-psychiatry,
capitalism, and therapy," Ron Roberts and Theodor Itten write:
"Despite their common cause in attacking the medicalization of
human distress and the coercive nature of psychiatry, Szasz has
frequently expressed considerable antipathy toward Laing."
Evidently unhappy that I was still alive at 86 and Laing was dead, they
continued: "... when the time comes for Szasz to shuffle off his
mortal coil, he will be remembered more for his insights into medical
myth making than for his destructive libertarian views or personal
attacks on Laing." (51) Although it is generally agreed that
predicting the future is difficult, Roberts and Itten are confident that
they can predict mine. As for "libertarian views," it goes
without saying that they are "destructive."

5

As noted earlier, my training was unusual because I regarded
depriving innocent persons of liberty in madhouses as morally wrong when
I was a teenager and, when I decided to qualify as a psychiatrist, I
deliberately avoided having to be in a position where I would have to
perform acts inconsistent with my conscience. Later, my contacts with
involuntary mental patients were rare and limited to two kinds of
interventions: If the incarcerated individual was innocent (not charged
with a crime) and sought his freedom, I assisted him in his quest;
contrariwise, if the individual was incarcerated because he was guilty
of a crime (of which he was prima facie guilty, typically by admitting
it) and tried to avoid legal punishment by pleading insanity, and if the
prosecutor wanted him punished, I assisted the prosecution in securing
the defendant's conviction. (52)

Laing's words and deeds throughout his professional life make
Burston's claim that Laing regretted conventional psychiatric
practices puzzling, to say the least. For example, in his autobiography
Laing wrote:

In my critique, "Antipsychiatry: The paradigm of the plundered
mind," published in the New Review in London in 1976, I emphasized
the overarching role of coercion in the so-called care of persons
stigmatized as schizophrenic and rejected Laing's view that the
schizophrenic's mind is plundered by his malevolent family, much
as, in the communist view, the labor of the worker in capitalist society
is plundered by the malevolent employer--a notion implied in the term
"antipsychiatry," resonating with the leftist label
"antifascist" for the supporter of the Soviet Union. (54)
Responding to my critique, expanded in my book Schizophrenia: The Sacred
Symbol of Psychiatry, Laing defended coercive psychiatry, specifically
the forced incarceration of persons diagnosed as mentally ill. In a
review of three of my books in the New Statesman in 1979, Laing asserted
that it makes no difference whether we accept or reject psychiatric
coercion:

This is not what I wrote. I wrote: "Psychiatry, as we know it,
would gradually disappear ...," and continued: "Specifically,
involuntary psychiatry, like involuntary servitude, would be abolished,
and the various types of voluntary psychiatric interventions would be
reclassified and reassessed, each according to its true nature and
actual characteristics." Yet, Laing concluded: "It sounds as
though it would all be much the same. It makes one wonder what he is
making all the fuss about, whether he is not making a sort of fetish out
of the medical metaphor, and a scapegoat out of psychiatry. We miss in
these books any in-depth analysis of structures of power and knowledge
such as we find in Foucault and Derrida." (56)

Laing's reference to the fashionable French left-statists
Foucault and Derrida reveals his passion for Jacobin-styled power.
"It is pretty suicidal" --warned Oxford professor of
philosophy Alan Ryan--"for embattled minorities to embrace Michel
Foucault, let alone Jaques Derrida. The minority view was always that
power could be undermined by truth ... Once you read Foucault as saying
that truth is simply an effect of power, you've had it." (57)
If ever there was a "minority view," today it is the view of
the few Individuals who oppose psychiatric coercions and excuses.
Cooper, Laing, Foucault, and the French intellectual fakes associated
with the antipsychiatry movement were power-hungry left-wing statists
who were interested in taking over psychiatry, not destroying its
intellectual foundations and scientistic pretensions.

The Laingians were warned: their guru approved of psychiatric
violence, provided it was exercised by the "right people."
Noted British existential analyst Anthony Stadlen did not let this go
unchallenged. He wrote:

Thanks to Laing's opportunistic sloganeering, psychiatrists
can now do what no other members of a medical specialty can do: they can
dismiss critics of any aspect of accepted psychiatric practice by
labeling them "antipsychiatrists." The physician critical of
certain obstetrical practices say, abortion on demand--is not
stigmatized as an "antiobstetrician." The surgeon critical of
certain surgical practices--say, transsexual operations is not dismissed
as an "antisurgeon." The fact that the psychiatrist critical
of certain psychiatric practices--say, civil commitment and the insanity
defense - is called an "antipsychiatrist" is evidence of the
defensiveness of psychiatrists and the usefulness of the term
"antipsychiatry." Every physician, except the psychiatrist, is
free to elect not to perform particular procedures that offend his moral
principles or that he simply prefers not to offer. De facto, the
psychiatrist is not free to do so.

6

Laing believed not only that mental illness is real but that
"it" could be cured by chemicals. According to Adrian,

Laing deceived the Home Office when he applied for special
permission to use LSD "in a therapeutic context" and then took
it himself. He also deceived all those who believed him when he declared
that mental disorders were disturbances in human relationships, not
disorders of brain chemistry, and then used drugs to "treat"
"patients." Laing accepted that LSD produced a "model
psychosis," hence that psychosis was a chemical disorder, a brain
disease: "Under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1964, a qualified doctor
was entitled to prescribe LSD to patients.... The actual effects of LSD
mimicked a psychotic breakdown.... [In a BBC interview] Ronnie extolled
the virtues of lysergic acid, mescaline, psilocybin, and hashish,"
and referred to the notion of chemically induced model psychosis as if
it were a fact. (60)

"As far as Ronnie was concerned," writes Adrian,
"the principal area into which he felt the need to expand during
1966 was drugs and, in particular, LSD, hashish, and mescaline. ... From
1960 until 1967 Ronnie's intake of substances, legal and otherwise,
increased considerably, and there was clearly a steady increase in his
personal consumption during 1965 and 1966, which coincided with his
living at Kingsley Hall. (61)

Clay writes: "LSD opened up new vistas, new fields of
experience for him, and he was to use it more and more.... With LSD he
found he could travel through time in a way that the past wasn't
simply at a distance but co-present. .... 'I now usually take a
small amount of it myself if I give it to anyone, so that I can travel
with them.'" (62) Although Laing's followers deny that
Laing was a drug guru, the high priest of "super-sanity,"
Adrian quotes from one of his lectures:

In short, Laing saw himself as a psychopharmacologist using
"uppers" instead of "downers." How does an LSD
therapist differ from a Prozac therapist? Each has his favorite drug and
uses his medical credentials and medical privileges to prescribe and
provide it to his patients.

Laing's favorite drug was alcohol. In the end, his heavy
drinking led to his losing his medical license. One of his patients
lodged a formal complaint against him with the General Medical Council,
alleging that, while drunk during a professional visit, Laing had
"abused and assaulted him." Laing "suggested that they go
for a drink in a public house outside of which Ronnie was alleged to
have said, 'I think this is one place I have never been thrown out
of." (64) Evidently, Laing was proud of his persona as alcoholic
brawler. After another drunken session with the same client, "The
drinking continued and after an hour or so the complainant decided to
leave. Before he did so a dispute arose over the non-payment of his last
visit. Finally, Ronnie demanded, in a 'drunken rage,' that he
depart. As he did so, the complainant continued, 'Dr. Laing slammed
the glass paneled door on me, catching my elbow.'" (65)

In 1969, the American journalist Albert Goldman came to London to
interview Laing. From his hotel, he called Laing. Clay reports:
"'Never had I heard a man tack and veer and reverse his field
so many times in the course of a simple conversation turning on where
and when to meet that night.' Goldman arranged to meet him at the
Savoy Hotel." (66) When Goldman arrived, Laing did not bother to
rise from his seat at the bar and was arrogant and rude from the start:

Laing's rage and violent self-contradictions were, I venture
to guess, not pointless. Disinhibited by liquor and self-pity, Laing
became aware that his mind was a cauldron of equivocations and
self-contradictions. He sought release from his pain in inebriation
venting his rage over a life he knew he had mismanaged and was now
helpless to put right. His life was a fraud and it was too late and too
costly to come clean. He soldiered on to an early grave. Meanwhile, he
exploited the press and the press exploited him. He was good copy almost
to the end and the media hounds tolerated his repugnant persona much as
medical voyeurs tolerate mutilated cadavers.

7

For a few years, Laing was a successful psychiatric con-man. At the
same time, there was something pitiful and pathetic about him. Clearly,
he was a deeply unhappy, angry person. In 1976, science writer Maggie
Scarf reported on a visit by Laing to Yale University in New Haven,
Connecticut:

As a public speaker, Laing was a bust. This did not stop him from
cashing in on the image he created and cultivated--a brilliant, romantic
rebel, a Byron poetizing about true sanity. It was all chutzpa, or cheek
as the British say.

In the fall of 1985, Laing was at a conference in Plymouth,
England. The writer Colin Wilson, another participant, recalled:
"He [Laing] was the most appalling speaker I have come across. I
found it almost incomprehensible that he had the cheek to come along to
what was supposed to be a day-long 'symposium'--with myself,
the poet David Gascoyne, and himself--and then ramble on in such a
totally disconnected manner, with long pauses, and a complete lack of
coherence." (69)

In December of the same year, Laing was one of the speakers at the
Milton Erickson Evolution of Psychotherapy conference in Phoenix,
Arizona. He had nominated me to discuss his paper. Each speaker had
contracted to have a copy of his presentation in the hands of the
discussant six weeks in advance of the meeting. Laing had no paper even
as he rose to speak. His lecture was a mixture of gibberish and silence.
This is how Laing remembered the event:

Suffice it to add that the organizers of the conference had clearly
stipulated that the speakers deliver finished, publishable versions of
their presentation in advance of the meeting. Laing blithely ignored it
and, once again, made excuses for violating his contract. Curiously,
Roberts and Itten exhume that event and describe it this way:

Happily, there are no skeletons similar to Laing's in my
cupboard. If there were, critics would have laid them out a long time
ago. Moreover, public behaviour--such as Laing's boozing and
brawling, near-failure to qualify first as a physician and then as a
psychoanalyst, his serial marriages and the neglect of his "first
family" are not skeletons in a closet. They are public information
about a public person, a fit subject for moral judgment. In my view,
Laing was an enemy of personal responsibility, individual liberty, and
the free society. He was a bad person and a fraud as a professional.

8

Laing's fame was closely connected with his role as the
Emperor of Kingsley Hall. Joseph Berke--an American psychiatrist and one
of Laing's early coworkers--offers this sketch: "Essentially,
Laing liked to remain at the center of a wheel, with all the channels
having to go through him. That way he gained great power over others. It
took me a long time to figure this out, not the least because like
Sigal, I was dazzled by his brilliance and my own desire to idealize
him." (72)

Theodor Itten's impression of Laing, whom he idolized and
still idolizes, was just the opposite. To Itten, an Austrian
psychotherapist, Laing was the embodiment of the peaceful,
egalitarian-democratic person, with a passion for cooperation, eager to
avoid competition and conflict. Itten's sole evidence is that Laing
allegedly once "dreamt of a football match where, as he put it,
'I am both sides. It only ends when the game turns into a
dance.'" (73) Itten, T., "Laing in Austria,"
http://www.janushead.org/4-1/ itten.cfm (74) Itten's denial of
Laing's life-long bellicosity and nastiness illustrates the kind of
abject dependence Laing could evoke in some people.

At the beginning of his career, Laing's closest collaborator
was Aaron Esterson (1923-1999), a psychiatrist who was also born in
Glasgow. In 1966, Laing wantonly destroyed that friendship. "Before
1966 was over," writes Adrian, "there came a night when Ronnie
'let Aaron have it.'... Ronnie refused to continue their
friendship unless Aaron 'took Jesus Christ into his heart.'
Aaron took the view that this was a piece of unadulterated cheek."
After asking Esterson to stand up and removing his glasses as if to
clean them, Laing "quite out of the blue, delivered a full blow to
Aaron's jaw." (75) Ronald D. Laing, a messenger of Jesus out
to convert obstinate Jews? There is silence about what this was all
about.

Sigal's experience also dramatically contradicts Itten's
fantasies about his hero. Sigal discovered the hard way that once you
became Laing's acolyte, he could reject you but you could not
reject him: leaving him was an act of lese majeste. The Sigal saga ought
to be the last nail into the coffin of the legend of Laing as a
psychiatrist opposed to the practice of psychiatric coercion. In 1965,
Sigal found himself imprisoned in Kingsley Hall. He escaped, Laing and
his gang went after him, assaulted him in his own home, forcibly
injected him with Largactil (Thorazine), and reimprisoned him in their
antihospital. A few days later, Sigal made his escape good, returned to
the United States, and wrote Zone of the Interior:

Laing's fraudulent cure of schizophrenia was enacted on the
stage at Kingsley Hall, much as Charcot's fraudulent cure of
hysteria was performed on the stage at the Salpetriere, to similarly
sensational effects. (77) The following excerpt from an interview with
Sigal in The Guardian (UK) in December, 2005 summarizes the Laing-Sigal
folie a deux:

In Zone of the Interior, Laing's assault of Sigal with
Largactil is more detailed and explicit. The Kingsley Hall staff is
given pseudonyms. Laing is "Willie Last":

Sigal was right. It took a long time for some of Laing's
disciples to realize that breaking a solemn promise--to a family member,
friend, or patient--is a grave moral wrong, the severing of a sacred
bond. Once severed, it can never be made whole. Some of his disciples
still do not realize this, indeed deny that it is wrong. In his review
of the U.K. edition of Zone of the Interior, M. Guy Thompson, a
therapist "trained" by Laing, writes: "I also heard Laing
recount this story [the Largactil assault on Sigal] at a public lecture
[without identifying the victim]. Laing clearly felt sanguine about the
incident and employed the story to highlight the difficulty in
determining in every case: what is the right thing to do?" (80)
Perforce this must be the case for any person who, faced with certain
basic moral choices, is unwilling unequivocally to commit himself to
refraining from particular practices--in the present case, from the
practice of psychiatric coercion. In short, Thompson's defense
identifies and incriminates Laing as the master equivocator he was. It
also puts paid to Burston's idealization of Laing as a psychiatrist
opposed to psychiatric coercion.

Ronald Laing--like many psychiatrists before him, such as Eugen and
Manfred Bleuler, Carl Jung, Harry Stack Sullivan, Frieda
Fromm-Reichmann, and others--believed that the voice of the
schizophrenic should be listened to and deciphered, not silenced with
physical "treatments." If Laing really believed this, why did
he have a medical bag and a ready supply of injectable Largactil? It is
plausible that had Sigal's book been published in Britain in 1976,
Laing would have been exposed and perhaps punished as a criminal,
Kingsley Hall would have been shut down, and the legend of the
"saviour of the schizophrenic" would have been cut short. (81)

9

In 2005, 16 years after Laing's death and 29 years after the
publication of Zone of the Interior in the U.S., the book was finally
published in the U.K. By this time, interest in antipsychiatry has all
but disappeared and the term --more popular than ever--became a grab-bag
category for any person or group that was in any way critical of
psychiatry's disease or drug de jour. Although the publication of
Zone of the Interior in Britain came too late to influence Laing's
career, one of its beneficial effects was a first-hand confirmation of
the assault on Sigal by one of the participants in the crime, Joseph
Berke. Berke's review of the British edition of Sigal's book,
in Existential Analysis in 2007, is an important addition to the history
of postwar psychiatry. (XXXXX)

It is not clear why a "talented person" would have wanted
to associate, much less let himself be led around by the nose, by a
patently confused and ill-behaved Laing. I met Laing on several
occasions and he struck me, from beginning to end, as a poseur, a
phoney. Berke continues:

Berke deserves praise for setting the record straight. Sigal was
right when he pleaded with his kidnappers, "You can't know
what you're doing." It seems they did not know and still do
not know. To this day, "Laingian" and "existential"
therapists avoid coming clean on where they stand on the subject of the
right to one's body, the right to drugs, the right to suicide, and
the uses of psychiatric coercions and excuses. They prefer to immerse
themselves in Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Derrida, and
ignore David Hume, John Stuart Mill, and Lord Acton.

Laing's psychiatric rape of Sigal and his obstructing the
publication of Sigal's exposure of it unmask Laing as the
self-seeking cult leader he was. Laing made a sport of betraying every
promise and trust, explicit and implicit--to wives, children, friends,
patients, and conference-organizers. What Laing and his accomplices did
to Sigal was more reprehensible than what psychiatrists do when they
forcibly drug patients. They committed a crime, called "assault and
battery." Institutional psychiatrists do not eschew coercion and
their interventions are, de lege, legitimate.

Laing addressed serious moral issues, but lacked--indeed, mocked
moral seriousness. His "philosophical credo" was summed up in
his apocalyptic crie de coeur, often admiringly cited by his followers:
"If I could turn you on, if I could drive you out of your wretched
mind, if I could tell you, I would let you know." (84) Le style,
c'est l'homme.

With his LSD-laced "therapy," Indian junket, faux
meditation, and alcohol-fueled lecture-theatrics, Laing managed, for a
while, to con people into believing that his boorish behavior was a
badge of superior wisdom. Then, as quickly as he built it, his house of
cards collapsed of its own featherweight. In 1989, Laing, aged 61
(almost 62)--"faced with the real and immediate prospect of being
completely insolvent, the father of a newborn baby, with no reliable
income, no home, a serious drinking problem, and a debilitating feeling
of depression bordering on despair" collapsed and died. (85)

Laing was the Robespierre of antipsychiatry, playing the role of
the "Incorruptible" speaking in the language of Pure Love. In
the Dialectics of Liberation, Laing offered this affectionate account of
normal child development:

This was the facade of Laing the Psychiatric Revolutionary whose
unconditional Love brings order to the chaos of madness. It concealed
Laing, the self-identified mental patient, opting for conventional
psychiatric care. In 1985, Professor Anthony Clare--host of the popular
BBC Radio 4 programme "In the Psychiatrist's
Chair"--interviewed Laing:

In effect, Clare invited Laing to write his "psychiatric
will," and the will Laing wrote requested that he be treated in
accordance with the "standard of care" of modern biological
psychiatry. (88) "The evil that men do lives after them," said
Shakespeare. (89) He was right.

Acknowledgment

I am greatly indebted to Anthony Stadlen for generously sharing
with me his encyclopedic knowledge of psychoanalysis, existential
analysis, and the history of the cure of souls. I am responsible for
errors of fact and other flaws.

(77) Szasz, T., The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory
of Personal Conduct [1961], revised edition (New York: HarperCollins,
1974); for a more detailed account, see Psychiatry: The Science of Lies
(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008), in press.

(78) Sigal, C., "A trip to the far side of madness," The
Guardian (UK), December 3, 2005.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/stor y/0,6000,1656440,00.html; see also Sigal, C. Zone of the
Interior, op. cit.

(88) Szasz, T., "The psychiatric will: A new mechanism for
protecting persons against "psychosis" and psychiatry,"
American Psychologist, 37: 762-770 (July), 1982.

(89) Shakespeare, W., Julius Caesar, Act iii, Scene 2.

(X) The term "antipsychiatry" is sometimes hyphenated,
sometimes not. For consistency and in conformity with American-English
style, I use the unhyphenated form throughout this paper.

(XX) Lowinger's list of disloyal psychiatrists included Robert
Coles, William Sargant, Alan Wheelis, and Norman Zinberg.

(XXX) "Licensed" is the wrong word here. Physicians are
licensed by the various states to practice "medicine and
surgery." Various medical specialty boards "certify"
physicians as psychiatrists, dermatologists, pathologists, and so forth.
A physician not certified as a psychiatrist may claim to be one. Many
prominent American psychiatrists have not been and are not "board
certified."

(XXXX) Son of Sir Julian Huxley, nephew of Aldous Huxley,
anthropologist and dabbler in the use of LSD and other psychedelic
drugs.

(XXXXX) In the review, Sigal's name is consistently misspelled
as "Segal." I changed it back to "Sigal."

Thomas Szasz, A.B., M.D., D.Sc. (Hon.), L.H.D. (Hon.), is Professor
of Psychiatry Emeritus at the State University of New York Upstate
Medical University, in Syracuse, New York. He is the author of 35 books,
among them the classic, The Myth of Mental Illness (1961; revised
edition, New York: HarperCollins, 1974) and, more recently, Coercion as
Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry (Transaction Publishers, 2007),
The Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays (Syracuse
University Press, 2007), and Psychiatry: The Science of Lies (Syracuse
University Press, August 2008). Dr. Szasz is also the author of many
essays, book chapters, book reviews, and miscellaneous pieces in both
professional and popular publications and contributes a bimonthly column
to the magazine The Freeman. His website is: www.szasz.com

The anti-mental health lobby, which is part of the right-wing
lunatic fringe, looks to the National Review for its intellectual
Wheaties. Perhaps it surprises no one to find an exposition in
[William F.] Buckley's journal by Dr. Szasz of the frightening
"menace of psychiatry to a fee society.... These views of the
metaphoric nature of mental illness and the psychiatrist as jailer
have also appeared in Harper's Magazine. It may be of interest to
know that Szasz's opinions are now distributed along with Robert
Welch's Life of John Birch by Defenders of American Liberties
headed by a former McCarthy committee counsel Robert Morris. The
anti-mental health movement, with a potential membership of 26.5
million Goldwater voters, finds confirmation of its views in Thomas
Szasz. (10)(XX)

The approach that Dr. Lowinger employs in dealing with Dr. Szasz's
criticism of psychiatric commitment is a particularly invalid one.
Dr. Lowinger tells us that "Dr. Szasz's opinions are now
distributed along with Robert Welch's Life of John Birch by
Defenders of American Liberties headed by a former McCarthy
committee counsel." We are also told that "the anti-mental health
movement, with a potential membership of 26.5 million Goldwater
voters, finds confirmation of its views in Thomas Szasz." In these
two sentences Dr. Szasz's views are associated with Robert Welch,
the McCarthy committee, the anti-mental health movement, and
Senator Goldwater. Is this not the technique we have come to
deplore as guilt by association? (11)

I was very pissed off at Deborah Rogers [Cooper's literary agent]
and Neil Middleton [his publisher] over the book [The Dialectics of
Liberation]. ... I thought that she and Neil Middleton had really
done me a publishing disservice by encouraging my alleged
association with anti-psychiatry ... Again and again I had said to
David Cooper, "David, it is a fucking disaster to put out this
term." But he'd a devilish side that thought it would just serve
them all right and confuse them. So let's just fuck them with it.
But I didn't like that. ... I, myself, liked David personally, but
I didn't like his books, although I liked his mind. (18)

Dr. Ronald Laing, author of The Divided Self ... gave evidence on
my mental condition. He confirmed that my description of my
experience indicated intense irrational emotions of persecution and
feelings of guilt, although believing I was innocent; and showed a
partial psychotic breakdown and with partial disassociation [sic]
of personality. He confirmed that in his report he had called it
psychotic and the splitting of the personality into or multiple
pieces. He went on: "The conflict is dealt with by this splitting
instead of dealing with it openly. ..." He said that his experience
with malingerers was considerable--particularly when he was a
captain in the Army. In my situation, he said, psychiatric
diagnosis must include assessment as to whether I was malingering;
and his diagnosis did take that into account. It was "partial
reactive psychosis. For some time he became irrational and confused
under emotional and other pressures." (33)

He shied away from defending himself against charges that early in
his career he had idealized mental illness and romanticized
despair. He said he later came to realize that society must do
something with people who are too disruptive. "If a violinist in
an orchestra is out of tune and does not hear it, and does not
believe it, and will not retire, and insists on taking his seat and
playing at all rehearsals and concerts and ruining the music, what
can be done? ... what does one do, when one does not know what to
do?" he asked. (38)

To say that a locked ward functioned as a prison for non-criminal
transgressors is not to say that it should not be so. ... This is
not the fault of psychiatrists, nor necessarily the fault of
anyone. ... It does not follow from such possibly disturbing
considerations that the exercise of such [psychiatric] power is not
desirable and necessary, or that, by and large, psychiatrists are
not the best people to exercise it, or, generally, that most of
what does happen in the circumstances is not the best that can
happen under the circumstances. (53)

In these three books [The Theology of Medicine, The Myth of
Psychotherapy, and Schizophrenia], Szasz continues, extends and
deepens his diatribe, which began in 1961 with The Myth of Mental
Illness, against what he regarded as the abuse of the medical
metaphor in our society. ... But suppose we do drop the medical
metaphor. If the rest of us could recognize that what Szasz is
propounding are, of course, eternal verities, then psychiatry would
disappear, and with it what he calls antipsychiatry. (55)

Dr. Laing's new role as the "perfectly decent" defender of
psychiatry against Szasz's "insulting and abusive" "fuss" calls for
comment. Laing is saying, unequivocally, that "it would all be much
the same" to him whether involuntary psychiatry be retained or
abolished. He is saying "it would all be much the same" whether
voluntary interventions, including his own, are intended as medical
treatments for illness or as interpersonal counseling, ethical
exploration, existential analysis. He implies quite clearly that he
is one of the "rest of us" who do use the medical metaphor. (58)

LSD was a drug which intrigued Ronnie and for which he was given
permission by the British Government, through the Home Office, to
use in a therapeutic context. ... Ronnie used the drug in therapy
sessions both at 21 Wimpole Street [his office] and, at a later
stage, in Kingsley Hall.... [He had also] tried heroin, opium, and
amphetamines, but they were not to his liking. Cocaine was fine if
you could afford it. (59)

An LSD or mescaline session [sic] in one person, with one set in
one setting, may occasion a psychotic experience. Another person,
with a different set and different setting, may experience a period
of supersanity ... The aim of therapy will be to enhance
consciousness rather than to diminish it. Drugs of choice, if any
are to be used, will be predominantly consciousness expanding
drugs, rather than consciousness constrictors--the psychic
energizers, not the tranquilizers. (63)

Laing emerged as a "pretty earthy and aggressive character," not
the enlightened philosopher he expected. Laing had insisted on
inviting his friend Francis Huxley (XXXX) along as well, having first
ascertained that Goldman, or rather his magazine, was paying the
bill. Laing's manner now began to go over the top. When the
obsequious maitre d' solicited our order, Laing commanded him to
serve a magnum of champaign with the fish. ... Laing [noted
Goldman] had reached the table on the rising tide of inebriation
and belligerence [having drunk heavily at the bar before Goldman's
arrival], now regaled them with some really coarse stories about
what went on in kitchens before serving the food. To illustrate,
Laing reared back and spat into a plate of Scottish salmon that had
been set before him with great ceremony. Goldman could hardly
believe what he was seeing. ... [He] was astounded to see Laing
behaving like everything he fulminated against in his own writings.
He was tight as a drum, filled with pointless rage, contemptuous of
anyone who did not walk on intellectual stilts." (67)

I went to hear him speak before a large audience ... Laing put on a
performance ... I would never have predicted. Seated on a large,
throne-like chair on the stage, facing a roomful of people who
seemed to be well-disposed toward him, he was inexplicably
uncomfortable--hesitant and almost confused. He began a sentence
and then paused in the middle, looking baffled, as if uncertain
where such a thought might possibly lead him. ... A good deal of
time was spent in tedious and seemingly endless discussions of one
meditative procedure--concentrating intensely on the tip of one's
nose ... Laing himself seemed essentially disinterested in what he
was saying. ... I could see the puzzlement on the faces of the
people around me. ... After about half an hour or so, Laing simply
ran out of energy and stopped. He stared out at the audience, then
remarked limply, "Now what is one supposed, really, to make of all
this meditation stuff? I don't know. I haven't come up with any
answers yet. In fact I've been listening for some answers all the
time I have been giving this lecture. But I haven't heard any yet."
Not surprisingly, this observation was greeted with a few
incredulous hoots of laughter. ... A scattering of people had
gotten up from their seats and were leaving the auditorium. (68)

I gave a talk that--the two pieces of it didn't hang together--they
hung together in what I said, but I didn't think they were going to
publish it as it stood. The two halves of my paper didn't seem to
be particularly connected. So Szasz got up afterwards to discuss it
and said that the nearest thing he had ever come to what it must
feel like to be subjected to involuntary incarceration in a mental
institution was having to sit through Dr. Laing's talk. From there
he went on in his own manner and tried to tear it absolutely to
pieces. What he fixed on was what he called my relativism and that
I was just unrigorous, sloppy, and a dishonest nihilist. It was
nihilism in disguise; he was dismissing me as a nihilist. He also
tried to make out that what I was saying was fashionable salon
nihilism and that it had nothing to do with science. So I wasn't
going to reply to that. You know, fuck it. (70)

Szasz compared listening to a talk by Laing as the nearest thing he
had ever experienced to what it must feel like to be subjected to
involuntary incarceration in a mental institution. ... Szasz also
went on to describe Laing's moral conduct as shameful and
reprehensible and argued that Laing had "sold out." No doubt
skeletons could be pulled from Szasz's cupboard but, as with Laing,
this would hardly be fitting to a consideration of their respective
worth either as persons or scholars. (71)

In September 1965, during the Jewish High Holidays, I had a
"schizophrenic breakdown" ... or flash of enlightenment ... or
transformative moment of rebirth. It's all in your point of view.
My 'breakdown' did not happen privately but acted out in front of
twenty or thirty people on a Friday shabbat night at Kingsley
Hall.... The notion behind Kingsley Hall was that psychosis is not
an illness but a state of trance to be valued as a healing agent.
(76)

We began exchanging roles, he the patient and I the therapist, and
took LSD together in his office and in my Bayswater apartment....
Laing and I had sealed a devil's bargain. Although we set out to
"cure" schizophrenia, we became schizophrenic in our attitudes to
ourselves and to the outside world. Our personal relationships in
the Philadelphia Association became increasingly fraught. ... That
night, after I left Kingsley Hall, several of the doctors, who
persuaded themselves that I was suicidal, piled into two cars, sped
to my apartment, broke in, and jammed me with needles full of
Largactil [Thorazine], a fast-acting sedative used by conventional
doctors in mental wards. Led by Laing, they dragged me back to
Kingsley Hall where I really did become suicidal. I was enraged:
the beating and drugging was such a violation of our code. Now I
knew exactly how mental patients felt when the nurses set about
them before the doctor stuck in the needle. ... Before I could
fight back--at least four big guys including Laing were pinning me
down--the drug took effect. The last thing I remember saying was,
"You bastards don't know what you're doing ..." They left me alone
in an upstairs cubicle overlooking a balcony with a 30-foot drop. I
had to figure a way to escape from this bunch of do-gooders who had
lost their nerve as well as their minds. ... In 1975, 10 years
after I broke with Laing, I completed a comic novel, Zone Of The
Interior, based on my experiences with schizophrenia. Published to
widespread notice in the US, it was stopped cold in Britain by
Laing's vague threat of a libel action. (78)

When I started to yell, Munshin clapped his hand over my mouth. I
bit it, fighting back and struggling with every last ounce of
strength. Then something sharp stabbed me. I looked down. Willie
Last was withdrawing a hypodermic needle from my leg. Oh no. He
gave the hypo back to Bronwen holding his medical bag. "For a
junkie he's pretty strong," grunted Munshin, hammerlocking me so
Boris could pull down my trousers. "Better sock it to him again."
Last quickly refilled the syringe from his bag and slipped the
needle into my behind. "Please," I said. "Please don't. Don't.
Don't. You can't know what you're doing." (79)

Sigal demonstrates the painful scars of many very talented people
who tried to get close, and stay close to Laing, only to be
rebuffed ...I don't know of anyone who was not eventually rejected,
although a few colleagues stayed attached for long periods of time,
by anticipating Laing's needs and desires and twisting and turning
with him. Thus, when he was into revolution, you talked left
politics (easy for Sigal), when he was into acid, you were into
acid (also easy), when he was into Eastern mysticism, you chanted
OHMMM (much harder). Sigal was clearly overwhelmed by Laing's
brilliance, but may have not realized that his mentor was also a
consummate "mind fucker" and trickster. (82)

De-idealizations are very painful. Sigal's comes at the end of the
novel, when he finally achieved a state of madness. He thought
Ronnie would love him. Instead Laing got frightened and convinced
members of his inner circle to waylay Sigal at his flat, inject him
with Largactil, and bring him back to Kingsley Hall '"for his own
good." ... Sigal's description is somewhat contrived but basically
accurate. I should know, as I was coopted for the ride. Very
exciting it was too, at the time. But it did get my own doubts
going. (83)

The normal way parents get their children to love them is to
terrorize them, to say to them in effect: "Because I am not
dropping you, because I am not killing you, this shows that I love
you, and therefore you should come for the assuagement of your
terror to the person who is generating the terror you are seeking
to have assuaged." The above mother is rather hyper-normal. (86)

The radio programme was recorded in the early afternoon, but Laing
was already mildly intoxicated when he turned up at the studio ...
Laing then spoke of his fears of getting into a "real Scottish
involutional melancholia" as his father and grandfather had. ...
The programme attracted a huge number of letters. Many listeners
wrote in to say how surprised they were that one of the most
depressed people to appear on the programme was himself a
psychiatrist and many listeners were surprised to hear Laing, the
"fierce critic of the use of drugs in psychiatry," consider using
drugs for himself to treat his depression. Clare had asked him what
he would want from a psychiatrist if he became "profoundly
psychomoto-retarded, profoundly depressed or suicidal," and Laing
had replied "I would want whoever was taking my case over to ...
transport my body to some nursing home and if you had any drugs
that you thought would get me into a brighter state of mind to use
those." (87)